Although Pyrite Ore will not provide Epic Gems from Prospecting, Epic Gems will be able to be crafted by using Alchemy Transmutes. This is good news as raid drops will not be the sole source of Epic Gems in WoW Patch 4.3. Alchemists will be able to get 6 new recipes in Patch 4.3 and those recipes will be for Transmuting the Epic Gems. The current data-mined Alchemy recipes do not show what materials will be required for the Epic Gem transmutes, but at least we know raid bosses will not be the only source of Epic Gems. I'm going to assume that the Alchemy Transmutes will share the cooldown with all the current Alchemy Transmutations. And you can bet that the Epic Gems transmutes will require multiples of Cataclysm Herbs and Cataclysm Rare Gems.

Jewelcrafters will again be able to cut raw Epic Gems into their cut versions, which is great news for those of us that make a lot of gold with our Jewelcrafters. There doesn't appear to be a new source of currency, so we can assume that the current JC Daily tokens will be required to purchase the new Epic Gem Recipes or a new item that awards Epic Gem Recipes.

Tome Of Burning Jewels

There is an item listed in the data-mined information called the Tome Of Burning Jewels. The Tome Of Burning Jewels is a Bind-On-Pickup item that could be a raid boss drop, or a vendor purchased item. I doubt it is a world drop since it is soulbound. Since it is soulbound, there is no way to sell these Tomes to other JCs. So it is NOT a Jewelcrafting equivalent of the Book of Glyph Mastery. Is it possible that Jewelcrafters can only purchase the Tome of Burning Jewels with their JC Tokens? Will Jewelcrafters only be able to learn their Epic Gem recipes at random choices, instead of picking which Epic Gem Cuts to get first? Wouldn't that make for some crazy random distribution of Epic Gem cuts where your profits or market control will be based off of the random number generator? My bet is that the Epic Gem Recipes will be added to the near empty JC vendor out in the Twilight Highlands.

So with the current Patch 4.3 PTR data-mined information we can see gold making options will be available for Epic Gems. So keep saving up those JC tokens and start looking for a variety of Cataclysm Herbs to pair up with rare gems to start Transmuting Epic Gems.